Can Blockchain be a game changer in the Land Registration Process

Land Registration – Certification Issuance, Title Transfer and Taxation

The land has often been at the epicenter of disputes, crime, and fraud. Land Deeds not only provide critical protection for buyers in developed nations but also serve as a basis for investment and economic growth across many developing nations. By securing a unique and non-corruptible record on a blockchain and validating changes to the status of that record across owners, a reliable land record can be created.

Why is it suitable to explore the use of blockchain in Land Registration?

One of the biggest challenges that gripped India was land ownership issues. Of late, blockchain is attracting the attention of many state governments for recording land titles since it can provide a platform to record mutations, digitisation of maps, integration of textual and spatial data, survey/re-survey and provide an update of all survey and settlement records in a secure, immutable and tamper-proof manner.

What is the current Land Registration, Title Transfer and Taxation Process?

Land registration process is highly manual and paper-intensive and involves multiple government bodies for verification and authentication. Land title transfer involves repetition and duplication of processes, thus resulting in high processing time and cost.

How can Blockchain help?

A blockchain based solution will be a good fit to bring robustness and digitisation to the entire process as it brings all the layers on a single platform with distributed ownership rights.This provides transparency, automated verification and irreversible trail of title transfer; thus blockchain enables faster, secure and cheaper mode of asset registry maintenance and taxation.

What is the Blockchain Value Proposition?

A decentralised, standardised system for land registration, title transfer and taxation records could reduce the number of intermediaries required, increase trust in identity of transacting parties, increase process efficiencies, and decrease time and cost to process.

Blockchain based traceability will bring ease to the judiciary and help in settling most of the property related civil cases in Indian courts.

Blockchain technology would reduce lead times and expedite the registration process.

Home Loans and Mortgage – What is the current situation and can Blockchain improve it?

The loan & mortgage value chain is highly fragmented with various government organisations, real estate, financial and legal intermediaries involved. It is still predominantly paper-based, manual and prone to processing errors and massive time delays.

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionise the entire loan & mortgage industry – financial institutions stand to gain from reduced costs throughout the value chain and more efficient interactions with suppliers, agents and customers.

The early adopters also have the potential to improve customer experience and retention and to win additional business from tech-savvy customers, who expect financial services to be simple, fast and transparent.

As a decentralised, contract-based transaction management system where loans and related payments and approvals are linked together; mortgage origination, initiation and execution is ideal for blockchain. A permissioned mortgage lending blockchain can dramatically reduce costs, fees and fraud; and improve efficiency, transparency and certainty along the whole transaction, for all parties.

The impact that Blockchain can have in the land registration certification issuance, title transfer, taxation, home loans, and mortgage spaces are game changing and nations with forward thinking governments who gravitate towards suitable adoption will feel its benefits both in the immediate future as well as in the long term.